It is prior art to make ant sculptures by casting materials in ant tunnels. An article by Petty in “Tunnel Vision”, January-March 1999 edition (www.aragriculture.org/news/tvision.html/1999/) teaches filling ant tunnels with either molten wax or lead involving the steps of locating a fire ant mound in the field; flaking off a 1-2 inch area at the top to expose five tunnels; pouring the melt into respective tunnels until filled or until a cast estimated to be of desired size is reached; permitting the melt to cool and set; carefully digging up the cast and surrounding it in a bucket of warm soapy water for at least one hour for wax, or fifteen minutes for lead and, gently washing the cast to remove the soil (and ants) from between the tunnels. Grass and other foreign material need to be removed subsequently (with pliers from lead).
Furthermore, Petty teaches that, with wax, the cast temperature must be maintained above 80 degrees to avoid brittleness and risk of damage.
Using lead requires melting the lead on site in a lidded cast iron pot using a fierce heating source such as a propane burner. Because of weight, the molten lead needs to be transferred to a smaller pot with a pouring lip or ladle, and poured carefully as a steady stream.
Clearly, the above steps are time consuming and careful handling techniques need to be performed in the field in the presence of biting ants—donning protective latex gloves lined with talc is suggested by Petty—added to the other disadvantages of either sculpture fragility (wax) or high weight and, a sculpture of somewhat unpredictable size.
Separately, casting with dental plaster has also been proposed in the prior art.
It is also widely known to keep ants in formicarium-transparent walled containers filled with transparent, (clear or colored), ant-nutritious gel medium as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,803,014 issued in 1998 to Guri, providing the distinct practical advantages that the ants do not require any other food or water and can be seen in their tunnels throughout the medium.
However, clearly, casting materials significantly above ambient temperature cannot be poured into agar gel without destroying or significantly damaging the agar gel while an attempt to use dental plaster was not successful, apparently because the plaster did not dry and harden sufficiently to avoid collapse when attempting to separate the casting from the gel.